Christopher Schroeder

Category: community and culture

  • For All

    For All

    I was intrigued by a recent biographical account of John Mark Comer, who for some is the current “personal-spirituality guy” with a large social media following.

    The article offers background about Comer, contextualizes his efforts, and shares professional and personal experiences. In doing so, it seems to be introducing Comer, and explaining his approach and influence, to those who readers who like I hadn’t heard of him.

    One of Comer’s central belief is that technology is negatively affecting its users’ spirituality. In contrast, he advocates for an approach that he calls “spiritual archaeology,” or excavating Christian practices from its history, and argues for organizing adherents’ lives around their founder’s habits, which he identifies as scripture, service, the Sabbath, solitude, fasting, prayer, witnessing, generosity, and community.

    Comer’s appeal, which seems too progressive to conservatives and too conservative to progressives, has been criticized as too narrowly focused. Nonetheless, it appeals to the author of this account, who reports her realization in conversation with Comer that she — late twenties, college-educated, city-living — is his target demographic and confesses her struggle like Comer’s has with these recommendations.

    I wonder whether such practices might increasingly appeal to others, and know that Christianity isn’t the only justification for these. I believe that these practices could appeal to anyone who prefers less revelation and more reason regardless of their religious persuasion if any at all.

    I wonder whether this author is offering her experience as an assessment although it would fall short of anything reliable (n = 1). I wish she would have envisioned a larger audience for her account.

    Others (Doucleff 2026, e.g.) attest to the need for a more values-driving life and offer such practices along with research studies and other reasons as responses to technology-dominated lives. An additional advantage would be reducing the allure of spiritual or moral superiority, which could be more compassionate and more appealing.

    Christians in other words aren’t the only ones who use digital technologies and suffer from spiritual malaise. All of us could benefit from greater community and more solitude, and even from studying canonical texts for example and serving others more.

    Surely any informed account of the foundational Christian figure would approve.

  • More From Moore

    More From Moore

    I can appreciate that Natalie Moore was able to watch both Prada movies with her mother but question the relevance of her most recent column.

    The sequel might have coincided as Moore suggests with a new Media Insight Project report, but it offers less about the future of media in the United States than she suggests. Rather, the movie relegates journalism, “Capital J” or not, to the setting for a continuing story that was started in the first movie.

    Corporate raiders might appear in the second to dismantle legacy publications, but the “page views” emphasis for example predates Andy’s return as the new features editor. Rather, the movie focuses primarily upon the relationship between Andy, who in her time away has become an award-winning journalist, and her former and future boss Miranda.

    This relationship, which occupies the center of this story, says more about time and aging, and the effects of these upon working relationships among women. Andy, who now trusts learned her instincts and advocates for herself, discovers that the world could be less vicious than she otherwise believed. Miranda in turn finds in Andy a former and perhaps future version of herself, someone who if they can collaborate will enhance both Miranda’s legacy and her life.

    This focus is not only established by the new working relationship between Andy and Miranda, but it is reinforced by the newfound friendship between Andy and her erstwhile rival Emily. Emily, who is working for Dior at the start of the movie, agrees to use her boyfriend Benji to buy the company and unbeknownst to Andy to install her in Miranda’s position, which Andy and Miranda subsequently prevent by finding yet another buyer, which nonetheless doesn’t prevent Andy and Emily from becoming friends.

    In this and other ways, this sequel is more about corporate relationships than the future of journalism, which makes this op-ed seem more like a vanity opportunity that allows Moore to reminisce about her mother and her career without offering much of substance to readers. This condition becomes even clearer in contrast with the only other op-ed in that Sunday newspaper.

    That reveals a larger concern, one that is actually about the future of journalism in Chicago. The Sun-Times seems to have generally reduced its op-eds, and some days offers none to its readers. Such circumstances can only increase the pressure for more from Moore, and from her editors and publisher.

  • The First Thing We Do

    The First Thing We Do

    I admire Zindy Marquez’s courage in confronting those of us who are retreating from “sustained advocacy, policy reform, civic engagement[,] and long-term commitments” to “racial justice” as these have become “politically and culturally unpopular,” and think she is right.

    I agree that those who believe that the United States isn’t still shaped by institutionalized inequality are ignoring “the very systems that continue to produce inequitable outcomes today,” and that such “coordinated” efforts misrepresent the past and distort the present to dictate an unequal future. And I accept her claims about the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the communities with which it collaborates.

    I just think she has offered an incomplete account of the problem.

    Marquez to her credit mentions those who found the pursuit of social justice “easier in theory than in sustained practice,” but she ignores both the history of this inconsistency and the conditions of its continuation. In contrast, I would include the hypocrisy among activists, lawyers, teachers, and others

    Such conditions have been convincingly documented by Musa al-Gharbi (2024) in WE HAVE NEVER BEEN WOKE. He offers in this book a compelling account of the way that symbolic capitalists, or those whose status or prestige comes from the knowledge economy, have used social justice discourse, and especially cultural identity discussions, to increase their own influence while ignoring the underlying economic conditions, including their own position within such a hierarchy.

    Anyone who hasn’t read this book and cares about social justice should do so to discover the ways that we maintain existing inequalities while espousing the opposite. Such insights might make us more likely to make more productive changes, or at least more aware of the efforts we need to make if we’re to do so.

    These efforts could also challenge the persistent impression among some that progressives cannot be trusted to work and live with professional and personal integrity, which might mean more allies. If nothing else, these reduce the source of examples used by these “coordinated” critics.

    This fuller account might mean we avoid replacing one social hierarchy with another, which merely reverses this discrimination without moving the United States forward. At least it offers a more appealing account of institutionalized inequality and more convincing arguments about alternative, including shared sacrifices for a greater good.

    Those who pursue greater social justice do much harm by promoting our intellectual and moral superiority. Instead, we should demonstrate the existence of this discrimination, including the part we play in perpetuating it, and the greater benefits of more equitable options, and must do so in good faith over and over, and not just in our political ideas but also our personal choices with an obvious respect for everyone, including those with whom we disagree.

    That is a better, and potentially more productive, way to care for our entire community as we pursue a more perfect union, one in which everyone is more equal than we all are now.